Pope Francis urged high-ranking church officials from around the globe gathered Thursday at the Vatican to "hear the cry of the little ones" who are victims of sexual abuse by priests. Francis spoke at the beginning of a four-day summit that brought together almost 200 high-ranking church officials, including leaders of bishop conferences from more than 100 nations. The summit will focus on making bishops aware of their responsibilities regarding sexual abuse, as well as accountability and transparency, the Vatican said.

President Trump reacted with surprise when asked Wednesday about reports that his administration was making a global push to decriminalize homosexuality. In an Oval Office exchange with reporters, Trump was asked about the plan, which was first reported by NBC News on Tuesday. “Mr. President, on your push to decriminalize homosexuality, are you going to do that?

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Feb. 27, Netanyahu's office said on Thursday, with the focus likely to be on Middle East issues led by Syria. The two leaders had been scheduled to meet this week, but that was postponed, with no reason give. At the time, the Kremlin said Netanyahu and Putin were to discuss the situation in the Middle East, including Syria.

Canada is looking to quickly bring over siblings of a Syrian refugee distraught over the loss of her seven children in a Halifax house fire, the prime minister said Thursday. "The immigration minister is seized with this particular case," Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said when asked if Ottawa would fast-track the immigration or asylum process to bring the woman's brothers to Canada in order to provide her with family support. The family was among tens of thousands of Syrian refugees welcomed by Canada over the past four years.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has refused to endorse Bernie Sanders for the 2020 Democratic nomination, despite working on the senator's first presidential campaign. A spokesperson for Ms Ocasio-Cortez, like Mr Sanders a self-described democratic socialist, refused to comment directly on the 77-year-old's Tuesday announcement he is running for a second time. We're excited to see so many progressives in the race,” spokesperson Corbin Trent said.

Smollett's family issues a statement calling the attack a racial and homophobic hate crime. Smollett's family says he "has told the police everything" and "his story has never changed," disputing assertions leveled on social media that he had been less than cooperative and changed his story. Feb. 1 — Smollett issues a statement telling people he's OK and thanking them for their support.

In fact, the F-21 is an F-16 that Lockheed has upgraded with new cockpit displays, conformal fuel tanks, a larger airframe spine that can accommodate additional electronics, fittings for towed radar decoys, a new infrared sensor and a refueling probe that's compatible with India's Russian-made aerial tankers.

Southwest Airlines, alarmed by a spike in flight cancellations and delays in the past several days due to reported maintenance issues, has taken the unusual step of publicly apologizing to customers and blaming the mess on its mechanics' union. In a statement late Tuesday, Southwest Chief Operating Officer Mike Van de Ven said the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association, which has been in contract talks with Southwest since 2012, has a history of work disruptions and that Southwest will be investigating the "current disruption and exploring all possible remedies.'' He noted that Southwest also has two outstanding lawsuits against the AMFA. "We apologize to our customers who have been inconvenienced by this disruption,'' Van de Ven said.

Italian fashion house Fendi said farewell Thursday to designer Karl Lagerfeld, presenting his last collection for them in Milan two days after his death. The packed audience included long-time friends, former colleagues, journalists and fashion specialists who were paying their respects to the "kaiser", who worked at Fendi for more than five decades. The company took out full page ads in international newspapers showing him on the terrace of its Rome headquarters under the headline: "Thank you Karl for the most beautiful journey.

An Internal Revenue Service analyst was charged Thursday with leaking confidential reports that revealed President Trump's former personal attorney Michael Cohen sought to profit from his White House access. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California charged analyst John Fry for leaking a suspicious activity report (SAR) to Michael Avenatti, the attorney who represented pornographer Stormy Daniels in her defamation case against President Trump.

A winter storm bore down on the U.S. East Coast on Wednesday, threatening to snarl New York City's evening commute after hindering air travel along the East Coast and prompting the shutdown of federal offices in Washington. Snow turning to sleet slickened roadways in the New York metropolitan area by the early afternoon and was blamed for a rash of fender benders and traffic jams. The widespread weather system piled as much as 6 inches (15 cm) of snow across the Washington area before turning to sleet, said meteorologist Bryan Jackson of the National Weather Service Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland.

Hundreds of people including women and children were trucked out of the Islamic State group's last Syria redoubt Wednesday, bringing US-backed forces closer to retaking the last sliver of the "caliphate". The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said however it was just a first wave of evacuations, and that a large number of civilians and IS fighters still remained inside. The implosion of the jihadists' proto-state, which once spanned swathes of Syria and neighbouring Iraq, has left Western nations grappling with how to handle citizens who left to join IS.

A new vote has been ordered in North Carolina's 9th Congressional District after the republican in the race admitted his lead over his democratic opponent was tainted by ballot-tampering conducted by operatives working for is campaign. The new vote was approved unanimously by the state's board of elections on Thursday after several days of evidentiary hearings in which witnesses said that operatives hired by the campaign of Mark Harris conducted illegal door-to-door ballot harvesting in violation of state law. Mr Harris, who had previously pushed back on the notion that his victory came as a result of any voter fraud, agreed on Thursday that his 905-vote lead over Democrat Dan McCready may have been impacted by that tampering.

Investigators searched for decades for the killer of an 11-year-old girl who disappeared while walking home from summer school in a case that gripped a California seaside community. A photo of a smiling Linda O'Keefe has hung for years on the wall of the police department in Newport Beach, reminding investigators to keep pressing forward on cold cases like hers. More than four decades later, authorities in Southern California said Wednesday that a Colorado man has been arrested and charged with killing her in 1973.

A leading cardinal acknowledged the global scale of the child sex abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church on Friday, on the second day of a landmark summit at the Vatican on tackling paedophilia in the clergy. The refusal by some bishops -- notably in Asia and Africa -- to admit clerical paedophilia was an issue in their countries was unacceptable, Indian Cardinal Oswald Gracias told the extraordinary summit. The pope has been under sustained pressure to tackle abuse issues in the beleaguered institution after numerous stories of paedophilia emerged in countries across the world.

The Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission are investigating Johnson & Johnson over concerns the company's baby powder may have contained asbestos. The agencies subpoenaed the health care product maker in the wake of several jury awards to plaintiffs who claimed the company's talc products were tainted with asbestos and caused their cancers. The agencies seek documents about those matters and other suits Johnson & Johnson faces filed by shareholders and pension holders over the situation.

Southwest Airlines Co. slid after warning that the U.S. government shutdown hit sales harder than previously estimated. The political stalemate that ended last month will reduce first-quarter revenue by $60 million as the aftereffects lingered on, Southwest said in a regulatory filing Wednesday. When the discounter reported earnings last month, it estimated the impact would be $10 million to $15 million for Jan. 1 through Jan. 23.

New York Times publisher Arthur “A.G.” Sulzberger responded to what he called “President Trump's continued attacks on a free press” Wednesday, hours after Trump lashed out at the paper as a “true ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE. Sulzberger wrote that Trump's “demonizing the free press as the enemy, simply for performing its role of asking difficult questions and bringing uncomfortable information to light, President Trump is retreating from a distinctly American principle. The latest standoff between the Times and the White House followed the paper's Tuesday publication of an in-depth examination of Trump's efforts to discredit and derail multiple investigations into his presidential campaign and action...

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Senator Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) said Wednesday that Venezuelan troops have already begun to disobey orders and will likely refuse to block the thousands of volunteers who plan to escort a humanitarian-aid caravan across the country's border on Saturday. “Saturday's a day when we're going to find a lot about the Maduro regime,” Rubio told Bloomberg in a telephone interview. Opposition leader Juan Guaidó, who is officially recognized as the president of Venezuela by the Trump administration and 30 other nations, has urged the military to defect and refuse Maduro's orders to block aid shipments at the border.

Afghanistan's Foreign Ministry summoned the Pakistani ambassador on Wednesday over his remarks that Afghan peace talks could be affected if India resorted to violence after last week's attack on Indian paramilitary police in Kashmir. In a statement issued after the meeting with Ambassador Zahid Nasrullah, the Foreign Ministry said it deemed his comments to be "in contradiction with Pakistan's commitments with regards to realizing peace in Afghanistan". Tensions between India and Pakistan have risen sharply since the suicide bomb attack in the disputed Kashmir region, which the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad militant group claimed responsibility for.

A small funeral home was packed with hundreds of mourners for a 21-year-old college student who was killed on the first day of his internship when a worker opened fire inside an Illinois manufacturing facility. Trevor Wehner was among five people killed in the Friday shooting at the Henry Pratt Co. in Aurora. During a brief religious service Wednesday in the Village of Sheridan, Wehner was remembered as family-oriented, someone who could change the atmosphere of a room just by walking in and who liked to tease and play jokes.

Vatican representatives met Wednesday with victims of sex abuse by Catholic priests a day ahead of a landmark conference on the protection of minors, the Holy See said. "The credibility of the Church, the Vatican and the pope are at an apocalyptic stage," Francois Devaux, co-founder of the victim's association "La parole liberee" (Freed speech), said afterwards. The Vatican's organising committee met "12 people, men and women, from different parts of the world who belong to various organizations," a Vatican statement said.